How to guidance on user synch?

It's not implemented yet and as said before I've no idea when it'll be implemented. The ticket for this is as follows.

forge.joomlapolis.com/issues/5306

I don't even know how this is going to help much. If you've fields that are required or have user confirmation enabled it could be a serious problem and we certainly do not want Joomla to be able to bypass this. So what to do in that scenario? Error? Redirect to CB registration? Bypass CBs confirmation/approval (not happening)? There's a lot to consider.

Thank you for the update and the link to the feature request. In our case, we have no required CB fields beyond the basic Joomla user fields. All our additional CB fields are optional. I respect that for sites where that is not the case, it becomes a real issue for a Joomla->CB synch plugin. For whatever it may be worth, our opinion is that probably the best approach is to create the basic CB user entry and let CB enforce the required field constraints if the user ever edits their profile. We saw this under CB 1.9.x with a different 3rd party extension that would add Joomla users with only a single name and we had CB set to first/last. The user would still get synched to CB, but when you edited the person's profile, CB required them to enter a distinct first and last name.

The problem with this is it allows "back door registrations". This means registrations that bypass the normal CB processes. It can be a serious security problem (CB confirmation and approval are specific to CB) if it's not handled properly and at this time I don't know the best way to handle this properly as it entirely depends on how 3rd party extensions are handling registrations. Even then it's just a bandaid and I encourage 3rd party developers with registration needs to integrate with CB where needed (they can contact us directly for integration help). It'd even be fine if the 3rd party extension just simply redirected to CB registration.

CB > Tools > Synchronize Users will for example auto approve and confirm a user synchronized. This is fine for a one time usage to synchronize an existing Joomla site with new CB install, but that type of usage is not and should not be permitted regularly or on frontend.

If that extension has a specific page for registration you maybe able to use Joomlas built in redirect system plugin to redirect from that page to CBs registration page.

So here is a use-case: With rsjoomla's ticketing system we could require someone be a registered user (registering through CB) before they can submit a support ticket, but we choose not to. RSTickets was chosen because tickets can be submitted by email. When someone send in a ticket by email, a Joomla account is created for them by the ticket extension so they can login (if they ever want to) and check on the status of their support ticket. This is a pretty common support model. In our case, pretty much all a registered user can do is update their profile and check their support history. We also use CB Query to display a customer's license keys in their CB profile for easy access.

I do understand that CB's main target audience is social sites - sites where membership in a community of some sort is a key factor of the web site. So our use case may represent a minority.

We don't do manual user approvals. There is no forums for someone to spam. Or really any thing else where a logged in user can cause issues. The use of CB is really just for CB's ability to allow extra fields associated with a profile, which allows us to keep additional information for customers of our software. I'll certain re-raise the issue with RSJoomla as well that a plugin to the ticketing tools to integrate with CB would be very helpful.

I started the discussion on their forum as well at www.rsjoomla.com/forum/52-rsticketspro/27372-community-builder-integration.html#34929

So here is a use-case: With rsjoomla's ticketing system we could require someone be a registered user (registering through CB) before they can submit a support ticket, but we choose not to. RSTickets was chosen because tickets can be submitted by email. When someone send in a ticket by email, a Joomla account is created for them by the ticket extension so they can login (if they ever want to) and check on the status of their support ticket. This is a pretty common support model. In our case, pretty much all a registered user can do is update their profile and check their support history. We also use CB Query to display a customer's license keys in their CB profile for easy access.

I understand that and it works fine for you, but that's a backdoor registration. That user got into Joomla, bypassing CB approval, bypassing CB confirmation, and bypassing and fields validation. Even worse if CBSubs was involved. That's why our usage, whatever that may be, in the system plugin for Joomla to CB needs to be done carefully (and unlikely anytime soon).

Since the information you need is minimal I suggest just doing a minimal registration form and requiring them to go through it. It's actually possible to have a CB registration form with just email. This is done by turning off username and name field on the registration form. Next in CB > Configuration > Registration you'd set password to be generated. Then ensure you've no other fields to display on registration and you'll have an email only registration form.

Below is a screenshot of an email only registration. The password note can also be suppressed by turning off password on registration or using CSS.